Seamus Costello

Seamus Costello (1939-5 October 1977) was a County Wicklow Councillor from Bray from March 1967 to October 1977 as a member of Sinn Fein (1967-1970), the Workers' Party of Ireland (1970-1974), and as the leader of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (1974-1977). As founder of the IRSP, he was also the leader of the Irish National Liberation Army's political wing.

Biography
Seamus Costello was born in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland in 1939, and he became a mechanic and car salesman after leaving school at the age of 15. At the age of 16, he joined Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army, and he became an active service unit commander in County Londonderry during the IRA's "border campaign" against the United Kingdom on the border with Northern Ireland. In 1957, he served six months in Mountjoy Prison, and he served two years in the Curragh prison camp; he became a member of the escape committee that helped David O'Connell and Rory O'Brady with their escapes. He worked to rebuild the Irish republican movement after his release, and he became a communist after learning about the Vietnamese struggle for independence from France. Costello became the first leader of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the Irish National Liberation Army, and Costello briefly served as Chief-of-Staff. Costello became rivals with his former Official IRA allies during the intra-republican feuds, and he was shot dead with a shotgun as he sat in his car in Dublin on 5 October 1977. At his funeral, James Connolly's daughter claimed that Costello was the only man who truly understood what Connolly meant in all of his speeches.